Chapter 24

Denial Continued

"Pwaaaax!" Starlight wails at me the second I enter Ultra Magnus's office. I almost panic, but I see that she's not hurt or in any sort of trouble, so I make myself stay calm as I go over to the desk. I ignore Ultra Magnus because Starlight is priority and he's okay.

"Hi, my Star," I say. She knows to not stand up when sitting on a desk, but she shuffles her little pedes a bit to let me know that she's sort of impatient, and she clings to me the instant I pick her up.

"What wrong?" she wants to know very insistently. "Nobody saying anyfing cause I too smawwwl!"

I feel like she's being kind of dramatic, but as I look at her, I think about the fact that she hasn't seen me all day and that everybody else is being kind of dramatic, too. I have to stay calm.

"Do you remember Soundwave?" I ask her. "The big blue mech with red optics?"

Starlight frowns slightly, probably thinking I'm off topic and not being a helpful brother, but she thinks for a couple moments and then nods.

"He was only allowed in med-bay, an he didn' like to talk," she says. "An he was Pwime big," she adds, reaching one arm out wide and up.

"He was Auri's guardian when she was your size," I tell her.

"Where is Auri?" She wants to know, sounding a little indignant. "Nobody followed our plan fo the slumber party. I never saw ya nor anybody, an Firestar jus taked me away from med-bay an gave me to Elita an Pwime fo a sleepover, an it wasn' even fun."

Her expression reproaches me, and her optics are soft and sad. She's not trying to fussy or difficult or cranky. She's just a very small bot who wants to know why things have gone off track. I should have come to see her a lot earlier in the day. I had too many thoughts in my helm to think of it. And I should have been with her last night, but I was shut down by a glitch. I can't remember any of last night. My processor failed me, and I failed her.

I sigh.

"I'm sorry, Starlight," I say softly. "I didn't mean for things to go that way. The plans had to change at the last minute because I suffered a very bad glitch-out and couldn't take care of anything."

"Oh," she says just above a whisper. She rests her helm on my shoulder, and everything is okay. Her little hand rubs my armor softly. "Are ya feeling better now?"

"Mostly better," I say. "I can tell you what's going on."

"Okay," she says, settled and peaceful now.

"So you remember Soundwave," I say, guessing I'd better start over.

"Uh-huh," Starlight says.

"Well," I say, "Since he used to be her guardian, he wanted her to go visit him, and yesterday… he got what he wanted. Auri's visiting with him right now."

"But…" A small frown of confusion clouds Starlight's face. "But… she was comin to live with us, not him. That wasn' the plan."

"We didn't want to change the plan, but Soundwave changed it," I explain. Then I add, "She'll come back, though." I hear Ultra Magnus shift when I say that, but I don't look at him. He, like everybody else, probably thinks Auri won't come back.

"It's unlikely that she will," he says in soft tone of voice that basically nobody on base ever hears him use.

"You don't know that," I say, which isn't the best response.

"I know Decepticons," Ultra Magnus answers back, and there is nothing soft in his tone of voice now.

"What a Detepticom?" Starlight asks. Of course she would have to be curious about a word we haven't used around her before.

I want to say "never mind, just forget about that," but I guess that wouldn't be fair. She's going to have to know sooner or later.

"Decepticons…" I say, and then I stop. I need to keep the definition simple. I feel lost. I look at Ultra Magnus.

"The Decepticons are another group of Cybertronians," Ultra Magnus says, back to sounding gentle. "They tend to be mean and do bad things. They're the ones that hurt Prowl… and have hurt most us at one time or another."

Starlight is quiet for a couple moments, and I am, too. She's thinking, processing. I'm waiting, uncertain.

"Are they the bad bots that killed our beautiful city of Pwaxians?" she finally asks.

Ultra Magnus nods. "They are," he says softly.

"Soundwave would never let anyone harm Auri," I say, wanting to be tall so I could thump my hands on his desk and lean in to force him to accept my words.

Starlight squawks and gives a tiny kick.

"I'm sorry," I say softly to her, loosening my hold on her so I'm not squeezing her so much. "Let's go to the park, okay?"

"Okay," Starlight says uncertainly.

"We're going to the park," I say to Ultra Magnus. "Good afternoon." I make a small bow and then go out the door and into the hallway.

I go the long way down the hallway to get out of the building so we won't go past Elita's office where Chromia might still be raging. I'd left Jolt there, and I didn't intercom him, but he comes hurrying after me, so I'm guessing he must have been on the lookout for me.

He catches up and settles into step beside me. Even though he works with me in med-bay a lot and I'm used to him, I'm not used to having him walk beside me. He doesn't walk like Prowl, and it bothers me a little to have him beside me like this.

"We're going to the park," I tell him. Maybe he won't want to go to the park.

"That sounds fun," he says. "Hi, Starlight."

"Hi, Jolt," she says, waving to him not very enthusiastically. "I wanted Auri to come live with us right today."

"I know," Jolt says softly, too sympathetically, and I realize he also think Auri isn't coming back.

"She's coming back," I say, going through the door to outside.

"Tomorrow?" Starlight asks.

"Probably not tomorrow," Jolt says gently. I want to shut him inside, but he comes right after us. I glare at him. "Uh," he says, faltering. He's probably thinking about the time I bit him. "Maybe uh, maybe umm next week," he says, and Starlight eyes him.

"Maybe next month?" she asks, sort of probing, sort of prompting. She isn't convinced that he means next week. I hope he doesn't ever have to rely on his liar skills to save his or anyone's life. Ever. If you can't convincingly lie to sparkling, your chances of convincingly lying to anyone else are probably very slim to nonexistent.

Jolt does his uneasy fidget of poking/rubbing at his left shoulder. "Uh, maybe… Maybe so."

Starlight gives him the look of unimpressed skepticism that she learned from Uplink. She already had her own look of unimpressed skepticism, but Uplink's includes an extra little tilt of the helm and shift of the shoulder.

"I don't know," Jolt says, surrendering. "Okay? I just don't know."

"Okay," Starlight says, not entirely convinced, but more convinced than when he was obviously lying.

"I'm sorry," Jolt murmurs.

Maybe I should learn how to do Uplink's look of unimpressed skepticism. It works so well for her, and it just worked for Starlight.

Some humans are staring at us again.

Ugh.

I transform quickly, tucking Starlight into my car backseat, and then zoom away. Jolt follows, of course, what else would he do? But at least he doesn't say anything. And Starlight doesn't say anything. I don't say anything.

When we get to the park, I transform back into biped mode and stride away, carrying Starlight again. She would have to run to keep up with me. Jolt could have caught up with me like before, but I guess he decides not to. He lags behind. He doesn't join us when Starlight stops me to play with the chimes, and he doesn't come sit with me when I sit in the gazebo and let Starlight scamper around the circle of the inside. He sits on a bench a little ways away from the gazebo, sitting sideways on the bench with his knees up by his chest, his arms folded across his knees, and his chin resting on his arms.

When Starlight is done scampering around the gazebo, I take her over to the rock garden that is closer to the bench, and we play with some rocks for a while. I get her started with some ideas, and then she goes ahead with things on her own. She works on stacking smooth flat rocks, seeing how high she can stack them before they start to wobble. She is focused enough that there's not much for me to do besides make my own stacks of rocks.

Jolt is still sitting like that on the bench.

Starlight is busy critiquing some rocks in her hands.

I go sit in front of Jolt, sitting sideways and facing him. He looks like he feels like this is a little awkward.

"Sorry," he says quietly.

"She's coming back," I say.

He avoids my optics. That's understandable, though. I can stare pretty hard. I keep staring. He rubs his shoulder.

"Um," he says. "I… look, I don't believe she is."

"That's obvious," I say. It sounds a little mean when I say it aloud, and I'm sorry that I did. I don't like mean.

He sighs.

I want him to believe. Or yield. Or something. I don't know.

"I don't want us to fight about this," Jolt says gently, looking at me. "Maybe you're right, and she will come back. Or maybe I'm right, and Soundwave won't give her back to us. Either way… yelling at each other won't change anything for the better. And Auri wouldn't-" He chokes up a little. "Auri wouldn't want us to be quarreling with each other."

That's true. I know she wouldn't.

"Can we agree to just wait and see, and not argue in the mean time?" Jolt asks.

I also don't really want us to fight either, so I nod. "We'll wait and see," I say. "And then she'll come back and prove you wrong."

Jolt sort of smiles. "I won't complain if she does," he says softly. He really doesn't think she's coming back. "Anyway," he says, shifting. "Need some help stacking rocks?"

This is a peace offering, so I nod. "Sure," I say.

We spend the rest of the afternoon in the park, the three of us. Jolt intercoms back to med-bay to check in with Ratchet from time to time, but there's no change at med-bay, meaning Prowl is still doing nothing, and Ironhide is still sitting with him.

We do lots of rock stacks, and then we play with the chimes again. We visit the mock crystal garden and watch the holographic flutterwings. We wander. We are in the gazebo again when Starlight comes over and leans on my leg.

"I'm hungry," she says, and that's not a surprise because it's almost dinnertime.

"I'll be hungry soon myself," I say. "Let's go get dinner."

"Where?" she asks as I pick her up and get to my pedes.

"Med-bay," I say, glancing over at Jolt. We could go to the pub, but everybody there will probably think Auri isn't coming back, and I don't want to deal with them.

"With Uplink and Ratchet?" Starlight asks eagerly.

"We'll see," I say, moving out of the gazebo.

Jolt walks beside me on the path out of the park. Then we walk up the street. We go a few blocks, and then he sends me an intercom message, wanting to say something without Starlight hearing it.

::You'll have to explain Prowl to her.:: He looks sideways at me to see if I understand enough.

I shift my wings. I do. And I don't like it. I think as we walk another block. Starlight is singing quietly in Praxian, a cute little song Uplink taught her.

"Star," I say when she reaches the end of the song.

"Prax," she says, smiling up at me.

"Prowl thinks the Decepticons aren't going to let Auri come back," I say. "So he's acting like she's gone forever."

"Oh," Starlight says. She's not really sure what this means.

"He's just lying still and not talking or doing anything right now," I say. "We'll just have to be patient with him until she comes back."

"Oh," Starlight says again, but she understands this time. "Okay. Uplink says I do a good job at being patient."

This makes me smile, and I snuggle her. "You really do," I say.

I don't smile when we reach med-bay, though, because I can tell the bots there are just a little provoked about something. We come in as Ratchet quietly, in doctor tones, is telling Uplink to not clench that hand so tightly. So she places both hands on her hips and looks like she wants to borrow a couple words from Chromia's bad vocabulary.

Jolt makes a clearing sound to let them know that we've returned and they're not alone now.

They both look over.

"Welcome back," Ratchet says to us like he's supposed. He fiddles a little with the data-pad in his hands.

"I'm hungry," Starlight chirps. "Are ya gonna have dinner with us cause we eatin here?" she asks hopefully.

Ratchet nods. "We can do that," he says. "Would you like to go pick out some fun dishes and napkins to use?"

"Sure!" She squirms just a tiny bit to let me know she's ready to run off by herself, so I gently set her on her pedes.

I guess we all watch as she scampers away and disappears down the hallway because as soon as she is out of audio range, Ratchet has something to say.

"Soundwave's sent another picture," he says, turning his data-pad and holding it for Jolt and me to see.

There is Auri, sitting on a pillow on the metal floor. She has a small cube of spice energon in one hand, and she's grinning as she bites into a tin curl that she's holding in her other hand.

I go and help Starlight with picking out dishes and napkins.

Prowl and Ironhide do not come to dinner. First Aid is out with some other bots, I guess, so he also doesn't come to dinner, but Ratchet, Uplink, and Jolt come to dinner. And they pretend that they are just tired and not upset or sad. Starlight still senses that something is off, so she's a little quiet at first, but Uplink distracts her from that and gets her chatting with a few prompting questions. I'm not sure what we'll do after dinner, but I end up not needing to worry about it.

When the energon cubes get empty, Uplink shifts and says to Starlight, "Let's make a blanket fort and have a good sleepover tonight since you didn't get a sleepover last night."

"Okay!" Starlight bounces eagerly.

Jolt says he'll take care of the dishes and cleaning up, so after getting two broomsticks and some pillows and big blankets from a supply closet on the way, I go with Uplink and Starlight to the room next to Prowl's room.

Uplink and I move the two berths in the room and put the mattresses on the floor, and then we stick the broomsticks through the sides of the berths so they stick out and will hold up the blankets. Ratchet comes in then to check on things and deliver more pillows. He helps me put the blankets up while Starlight giggles and Uplink teases us. Everything feels normal and okay for a few minutes.

Then Ratchet crouches down and comes into the pillow fort, which is something he's never done. Starlight squeals and laughs.

"Ratchet!" she says, laughing some more and bouncing.

"So this is where all the fun is," Ratchet says, looking around, and I leave.

I go check on Prowl. He's still not doing anything. Ironhide has taken a data-pad and rested it on Prowl's back, not as a joke but just because that's where it can go for him to look at it easily, and Prowl doesn't care.

"We made a blanket fort," I say. It doesn't seem like exactly the right thing to say, but I don't know what else to say.

Ironhide shifts his optics from his data-pad to me. "We?" he asks.

"Uplink and Ratchet and me, for Starlight," I answer.

"I'm sure she likes that," Ironhide says, smiling less than halfway.

His data-pad has the picture of Auri from Soundwave with the spiced energon cube.

I go back to the blanket fort room. There is a movie playing inside the fort. My spark aches like Prowl and Auri are both gone, and not just Auri.

I go back to Prowl's room.

"We're watching a movie," I say.

Ironhide looks up from his data-pad again and doesn't say anything. I don't say anything else. I don't know what to say. And also, if I open my mouth again, a scream might come out. I just stare at Ironhide and Prowl. Ironhide looks back at me and then down at Prowl after a little while. Then he sighs very softly and says "okay" and puts his data-pad away.

"Come on," he says gently to Prowl and gathers him up in his arms and then gets to his pedes.

I lead the way to the blanket fort room, and I pull back a blanket on the fort.

"Oh! Hi!" Starlight says, peeking up at Ironhide. Then she gets quiet and stares.

"Hi, little one," Ironhide says gently.

Uplink talks softly to Starlight while Ironhide puts Prowl in the fort and then gets in himself and takes Prowl back on his lap. I put the blanket back in place and then crawl in under it. Ratchet is still there, and there is not much space left.

Ratchet scoots a little closer to Uplink to make some space, and I tuck in between him and Ironhide. Starlight leaves Uplink's lap after a moment, crawling over Ratchet's lap and then onto me. I rub her helm, but I still can't speak. She snuggles, but from the angle of her helm, I can tell that she's watching Prowl. Prowl is either asleep or pretending to be asleep. She keeps watching him. Everyone else watches the movie. It's a movie for sparklings, but everyone else watches it like life depends on it. Except me. I guess I am too tired because I fall asleep before it ends.

When I wake up, I'm lying down squished up with the other bots, and it's early morning and someone is peeking inside the fort.

I whisper, "Go away," before I realize that it's only First Aid. "Oh, hi," I say.

"Hi," he whispers back. Through the gap in the blanket where he's pulled it back, I can see that Jolt is standing a little ways behind him. "You can go back to sleep. I was just checking on you bots," he whispers, and then he puts the edge of the blanket back in place and sneaks away with Jolt following.

I lift my helm and look around at us. Ratchet and Uplink are snuggled up together so much that they're pretty much entwined with each other. I'm also entwined since one of my pedes is stuck in with their legs, and Chromia is sort of partway under me and beside me with an arm wrapped around me. I don't remember her coming in, so it must have been after I was asleep. Her helm is on Ironhide's leg, and Ironhide has a hand resting on her shoulder. His other arm is around Prowl, with Prowl draped on his other leg and leaning/propped up on his belly. And Starlight is sprawled across Prowl's shoulders. She fits differently than she did when she was a tiny sparkling, but she's managed to make it look comfortable enough and not like she's going to fall off. I guess we must look like a human Renaissance painting with all the people tangled up and everything, aside from the fact that we have all our armor on.

Jolt probably checked on us first and then chuckled to himself and fetched First Aid so he could see us jumbled up together like this. They'd better not tell anybody about Ratchet and Uplink. I don't really think they will. They're better than that. Ratchet and Uplink aren't doing anything, anyway.

Auri should be here.

I check our secret Autobot base website. It always takes me a long time to wade through the updates page because it's in English for the humans, and that is not an easy language for me. It would be easier for me to translate all the reports and reminders and notices from Cy-Stan to both Kaonic and Praxian. But I'm trying to get better at the English stuff.

I look at the first thing

*Important Notice*

Dear human allies,

Please note that while many of us appreciate your condolences and words of sympathy regarding Auri's abduction, it is imperative that you give Chromia and Praxus space and privacy at this time. Kindly do not approach them, speak to them, or stare at them. If you see other humans engaging in this type of behavior, please remind them of this notice. If you encounter Chromia or Praxus in a situation where you feel they may need some support, please contact Autobot security.

Thank you for understanding.

I need to go do chores. Yes, I know it's a lot earlier in the morning than I usually do chores, but I need to go do chores. I will not scream.

I disentangle myself from the other bots and leave to go do chores. If there are no chores, I will make some.